Barbarians inside the gates

Nouri of the moor next door mourns the murder by insurgents of Khalil al-Zahawi, one of the world's great calligraphers of Classical Arabic.

While there are despicable habits on the Americans' part (for instance turning tombs of historical figures into barracks and foosball rooms; or destroying the country's system of order all at once without planning out how to manage it) the insurgents seem to be more like a horde of barbarian locusts, sucking the country dry and contributing nothing. Killing, torturing, intimidating, maiming, and leaving nothing behind but scared children and hatred.

What, apart from their indestructable sense of spiritual superiority, do the Jihadists offer? All of them the products of failed cultures and economies, they can do nothing but destroy what others have built. Their only vision of the future is a fantasy with even less appeal than that of the communists of yesteryear; their only rallying cry that of the dying; their only path through their cult of death.

(via Pajamas Media)